Department of Infectious Diseases and Neuroinfections, Medical University of Białystok, Żurawia 14, 15-540, Białystok, Poland.
Department of Analytical Chemistry, Medical University of Bialystok, Mickiewicza 2d, 15-222, Bialystok, Poland.
Sci Rep. 2022 Jun 9;12(1):9538. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-13765-2.
Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) is an infectious viral disease, the pathogenesis of which is still not fully understood. Additionally, TBE can be complicated by co-infections with various bacteria that are also transmitted by ticks, which can affect the proper diagnosis and treatment. Therefore, the aim of the study was to evaluate changes in the plasma phospholipid (PL) and ceramide (CER) profile of patients with TBE and patients with bacterial co-infection (B. burgdorferi or A. phagocytophilum) in relation to healthy subjects. For this purpose, a high-resolution LC-QTOF-MS/MS platform as well as univariate and multivariate statistics were used. The results of this study showed that the levels of phosphatidylcholines (PC) and lysophosphatidylcholines (LPC) species were increased in the plasma of patients with TBE and patients with TBE co-infected with bacteria. On the other hand, observed differences in the content of phosphoethanolamines (PE) and sphingomyelins (SM) make it possible to distinguish TBE patients from patients with co-infections. The opposite direction of changes was also observed in the CER content. This study showed significant modifications to the metabolic pathways of linoleic (LA) and arachidonic acid (AA), as confirmed by the quantitative analysis of these fatty acids. The obtained results allow to distinguish the pathomechanism of TBE from TBE with bacterial co-infection, and consequently may improve the diagnostic process and enable more efficient pharmacotherapy against both pathogens.
蜱传脑炎（TBE）是一种感染性病毒性疾病，其发病机制仍不完全清楚。此外，TBE 可能并发各种由蜱传播的细菌感染，这可能会影响正确的诊断和治疗。因此，本研究的目的是评估 TBE 患者和并发细菌感染（B. burgdorferi 或 A. phagocytophilum）患者与健康受试者相比，血浆磷脂（PL）和神经酰胺（CER）谱的变化。为此，使用了高分辨率 LC-QTOF-MS/MS 平台以及单变量和多变量统计方法。这项研究的结果表明，TBE 患者和并发细菌感染的 TBE 患者的血浆中磷脂酰胆碱（PC）和溶血磷脂酰胆碱（LPC）的水平增加。另一方面，观察到磷酸乙醇胺（PE）和神经鞘磷脂（SM）含量的差异使得能够区分 TBE 患者和并发感染患者。CER 含量也观察到相反方向的变化。这项研究表明，亚油酸（LA）和花生四烯酸（AA）的代谢途径发生了显著改变，这通过对这些脂肪酸的定量分析得到了证实。所得结果允许将 TBE 的发病机制与并发细菌感染的 TBE 区分开来，从而可能改善诊断过程并使针对两种病原体的更有效的药物治疗成为可能。
